Page 65 of Deck the Skulls
Zan held up his left hand and wiggled his naked ring finger. “I got them specially made. The outside is steel, tough and hard. The inset is gold, a soft malleable metal. That’s us. To the outside world, we’re hard and tough, but we are vulnerable and soft for each other.”
Both Anatoly and Rissa stared at him. He felt gentle startlement at his gift, then deep affection. “This was very thoughtful, Zan,” Anatoly murmured as he tugged off the ring he normally wore and held his hand out to Rissa. “Would you please?”
With a suspicious sniff, Rissa nodded and slid the ring on him.
“They’ll always fit perfectly because I had them spelled,” he explained as he held his hand out to Rissa. “It’ll stay with me even when I shift. Although I guess that’s not a worry for you when you take your owl form.”
Rissa pinned Anatoly with a curious look. “Owl form?”
Zan could feel discomfort coming from the vampire. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
“But I want to see,” Rissa said.
“Maybe,” Anatoly said, and Zan heard the unspokenin many many years from now.
“I’ll ask for it on my birthday,” she said as she drew their hands together to admire their matching rings. “These are the best gifts I’ve ever received. Thank you, guys!”
***
Anatoly
“We aren’t done,” Anatoly said, nodding his head at the two gifts sitting on the floor next to Zan. The shifter gave him a dubious look at the same time Anatoly could feel doubt throughtheir link. The two had argued over giving Rissa these tokens. Zan thought they’d freak her out, but Anatoly was confident that she’d appreciate what they meant.
“We could save them for later,” Zan urged.
“Wow. That feels really odd!” Rissa exclaimed, blinking rapidly.
“What’s odd?” Zan asked.
“You guys don’t agree on something,” Rissa said. “I can feel it. It’s like my brain is being gently tugged in two directions.”
Anatoly still couldn’t believe how well Rissa could read both of them. It was unusual for one member of a flock to get more information from a link than the others, but that was the case with Rissa. If he wasn’t blocking her from his thoughts, she’d be hearing what he was thinking even though all he got from her were emotions and an occasional image, just like with Zan.
“I’m not sure Anatoly’s gifts are appropriate,” Zan said with a rueful smile and handed her the first one. “But I guess there’s no turning back now.”
“Yeah, no! I need to know what they are!” she agreed with a chuckle. “I’m dying of curiosity. Is it more jewelry?”
“I can make them into jewelry for you,” Anatoly offered as she ripped off the paper, then opened the box.
She stared at the contents, then finally looked up at him. “Are these, um, human teeth?”
“They’re from the dentist who pulled your tooth without anesthesia or any numbing agent,” he explained. “I hired a private investigator to find your abusive foster father, and he turned up as well. It seems he was running a scam where foster families would come to him, and he’d do as many procedures as he could, bill the state, then give the foster parents kickbacks.”
She blinked at him and for a moment, their link went totally quiet. That meant she was so stunned she wasn’t feeling anything.
“I told him that was a weird gift,” Zan grumbled, resting his chin on her lap and rolling his eyes up to look at her.
“Is he still alive?” she asked, holding up the box.
“Yes,” Anatoly said. “And he was awake and aware for the entire process.”
A fiendish smile curved Rissa’s lips at the same time as a deep sense of satisfaction rolled through the link. “Good.”
She looked back down at the teeth. “I don’t want to turn these into jewelry, but maybe something else. Like putting them in resin and turning them into a Christmas tree ornament. Every year, I could remember how much pain that asshole was in when you did this and smile as I hang it on the tree.”
Anatoly chuckled. “That’s my human, slipping toward the darkness.”
“Is this gift better than Joan’s new shelter?” Zan asked.